Distributed transaction processing allows a transaction to be implemented at various locations within a distributed processing system. In order to implement this transaction processing, a communication service must be provided between each program application, local and remote resources and the transaction managers participating in the transaction. Conventional transaction processing systems provide communication protocols which support a single proprietary communication service. Further, emerging standards, particularly those relating to a UNIX operating system (UNIX is a registered trademark of AT&T) do not address the issue of allowing different communication protocols to co-exist within a distributed transaction processing environment. Existing standards include the definition of a proprietary communication as part of a distributed transaction processing protocol definition, and further define an application interface for distributed transaction processing which contains transaction management and proprietary communication functions.
Conventional distributed transaction processing systems utilize a transaction manager and communication manager (service) resident in the same layer of software. This architecture will not allow a program application to write directly to the communication manager, but requires the application to communicate via the transaction manager. Further, existing communication applications must be rewritten to use the communications facilities provided within the distributed transaction processing system, and greater system overhead is sustained due to the mapping required between a generic communication service and specific proprietary communication protocol.
It would be extremely useful in terms of flexibility and efficiency to be able to define an environment by establishing a method which supports the utilization of any communication protocol within a distributed transaction processing environment.